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AI adoption is no longer the challenge—trusted context is. Most organizations have AI tools, but many still rely on disconnected, stale, or unverified data, limiting the quality and trustworthiness of AI-generated outputs. Meltwater MCP brings trusted, real-time intelligence into AI assistants.

Your Best Context is Already in the Room

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics?
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.
Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.
Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

The political landscape has changed quite a bit in the last couple of decades. The internet has played a large role in this transformation. Social media, in particular, is now a serious factor in political campaigns and in the way people think about issues.

Candidates and their supporters constantly post their views on Facebook and Twitter. Each party has its own pages, from which it broadcasts propaganda and requests for donations. Let’s look at some of the leading ways that social media influences politics today.

One of the ways that social media has transformed politics is the sheer speed at which news, poll results and rumors are shared. Whereas in the pre-internet days, people had to wait for the next newspaper or TV news show to get the latest information, online news is a 24/7 phenomenon.

Social media has taken this a step further. While you can access news on many websites at any hour, most people spend more time on sites such as Facebook and Twitter than they do on serious news or political websites. This means that you get all of the latest trending news stories and opinions shared by your friends whenever you log on.

Political polls are an important part of every campaign. They are often confusing because you can often find multiple polls with contradictory results posted on the very same day.

As with other types of political news, the internet has greatly increased the number of poll results we see each day. Social media has accelerated this even more. Not only do social media sites report the results of polls, you can actually participate in Facebook polls.

Polls results have a big influence on elections. This is true even if they are flawed. A poll can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, if people think one candidate is far ahead in the race, they might conclude there’s no point in voting for the underdog. When people are posting the latest poll results on social media throughout the day, there’s a great deal of pressure on candidates to pull ahead of their opponents.

One of the positive effects that social media has on politics is the opportunity for voters to interact more easily with candidates and elected officials. Traditionally, if you wanted to meet a politician or candidate, you’d have to attend a live event. Not everyone is able to do this. With modern technology, it’s now possible to attend virtual events where you can participate in live streaming events and interact with politicians and candidates.

Targeting is used throughout the advertising industry to make sure that ads and messages reach the right audience. Politicians do this as well. In the age of social media, politicians and people running for office are able to target their campaigns.

If a candidate wants to address the concerns of women, college students, retired people, Latinos or any other group of voters, they can now tailor their messages. Just as advertisers on Facebook are able to use analytics and targeted advertising, so can candidates and politicians. Thus, if you notice that political messages seem to be talking to you personally, this is no accident.

Political campaigns are now influenced by every story, whether true or not, that gets spread around social media. It’s getting more and more difficult to separate actual news from fake news online. Social media makes this distinction especially confusing. The constant stream of memes, links and rumors about political leaders and candidates is a mixture of truth, lies, satire and speculation.

There are now quite a few fake or satirical “news” sites that often post stories that sound authentic. The Onion is the best known of these, but there are now many others as well. Some fake news sites are not even amusing but simply exist to post clickbait stories or to troll readers who don’t do their own research.

There are also sites with political biases or those peddling various unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. It’s easy to be influenced by misinformation posted by your friends and followers, even if they don’t intend to mislead you. It’s therefore necessary to use a great deal of discernment before believing anything.

One of the hidden forces that operates on social media is confirmation bias. This is especially powerful when it comes to controversial topics, including politics. If you’re like most people, the majority of your friends and followers on social media probably share your outlook. This means that the vast majority of tweets, Facebook posts, pins or other content you read on these sites tend to express the same point of view, one that you already hold.

It’s natural for people to surround themselves with others of like mind. This is true both online and offline. On social media sites, this can create the illusion that “everybody” thinks the same way. If you have a few hundred friends on Facebook, for example, and 90 percent of them agree on most political issues, the information you get will be filtered through this bias. People will post links to stories that confirm your existing bias. They’ll repeat opinions you already hold.

For this reason, social media may reinforce our opinions and make it more difficult to entertain alternative points of view. In politics, it can help to make people more opinionated and less tolerant of others. On the other hand, if you make an effort to connect with an assortment of people with diverse viewpoints, you can overcome confirmation bias and use social media to make you more open-minded.

Because social media is relatively new, we’re just starting to see its impact on society. There are sure to be many political changes that come about due to social media. There are now proposals for internet voting, which could lead to more people participating in elections. This could make social media even more influential, as people could literally vote moments after reading the latest comments or links they found on Facebook or Twitter.

Other advancements will also change politics. Polling techniques on social media will become more common and, hopefully, more accurate. More virtual political rallies and town halls will take place. As social media becomes ever more popular, its impact on politics will only increase over time. It will be interesting to observe how this plays out.

If you’re looking to have a powerful search platform at your fingertips during the election season, that gives an unlimited number of ad-hoc searches on billions of social conversations, then you should see the power of the Meltwater Suite.

How Social Media Affects Politics

In the crowded market of colleges and universities, making sure your brand stands out while increasing engagement with your community can be a challenge. That’s why we like spotlighting schools who go above and beyond with their social strategy. Here are five of the best.

It’s no secret that social media has become younger generations’ primary form of communication. From communicating with friends and family to keeping up with the latest news, social platforms serve a variety of purposes.

When it comes to attracting prospective students, interacting with current students, and staying connected with alumni, universities have embraced social media as a powerful marketing tool.

Here are the 5 best university social feeds that are truly a notch above the rest.

You might know the University of Michigan as the Wolverines, but did you know they are also pioneers on the Snapchat front? As only the second university in the United States to begin marketing on Snapchat, they’re the undisputed experts in the field.

One week after launching their Snapchat account, they gained over 1,100 followers on Snapchat, and received nearly 800 snaps. Each snap showcased a unique part of campus life.

To this day, the University of Michigan continues to be the best university social feed for engaging students on a variety of platforms.

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Home of the Mustangs and situated along the central coast of California, the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) team deserves to be right up there with the best university social feeds in the nation.

They’ve done a lot of great stuff on social media, but my favorite is their #CalPolyNow hashtag campaign to help share students’ voices and experiences via photos and videos.

On Instagram, for example, students are asked to use Cal Poly hashtags while posting and the social team then curates that content, sharing it on the main university account. The team tags the student and uses the #CalPolyNow hashtag to add hyper-relevant user-generated content to their stream.

NYU is an inspiration to not only the collegiate world but to brands everywhere.

Did you know that they manage more than 1,000 social media accounts campus-wide? Incredible!

Located somewhere between mid-and-downtown in bustling streets of New York City, NYU takes full advantage of their incredible landscape, offering students, alumni, and prospective students a daily dose of inspiration.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BelNrX-BZz5/?utm_source=ig_embed

But busy city streets aren’t the only thing they’re good at. The NYU social media team also shares real, heartwarming stories of their students:

These “Violet Spotlights” are some of their most engaging content on Facebook in terms of likes, comments, and shares.

Harvard. The oldest and quite possibly, most renowned university in the world, isn’t only known for their academic prowess. Harvard also has one of the best university social feeds in the business – demonstrating that with great intellect comes great creativity.

With more than 7,000,000 followers across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, the Harvard social team drives tens of thousands of engagements on a daily basis. Of course, much of their content is educational (and mind-blowing!) in nature:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfRJDoTH10B/?utm_source=ig_embed

Harvard uses their various social media channels as a way to educate, inform, and inspire:

Instead of telling current students, prospective students, and alumni why Harvard is great, they show them.

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) makes the most of its breathtaking on-campus architecture, as well as the stunning California weather.

Their social media presence is a constant reminder to students, alumni, and community why they’re one of the most sought-after universities to attend.

By creating the simple hashtag #SceneAtUCLA, their Instagram account is encouraging everyone to be a part of the visual story. The hashtag has been used more than 11,000 times on Instagram alone!

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bedsib8lKEH/?utm_source=ig_embed

Hashtags allow the UCLA social media team to curate photos into one beautiful feed and provides audiences with a campus experience through the eyes of students.

The world’s best university social feeds illustrate the power of visual storytelling and educational value on social media. Whether it’s academics, athletics, research, or campus life itself, universities focus on engaging content to highlight everything that they have to offer.

Younger generations are highly likely to use social media as a decision tool in deciding which university to attend. Whereas alumni might use social media to stay in touch with their alma mater. With the right strategy and tools in place, universities can win the hearts and minds of their community.

With universities and colleges acting as a nexus for social media and producing so much social media content on their own, having a media intelligence platform is a necessity. And don’t forget a well-defined social media program.

5 of the Best University Social Feeds

Top SaaS companies distinguish themselves by perfectly balancing innovation and utility. There's something original and surprising about what they offer, but it also makes perfect sense. What about their social media marketing strategy? How do they get their campaigns to stand out? Here we look at some of our favorite SaaS social media feeds. For extra inspiration, see examples of top social campaigns by nonprofits, healthcare, tourism, sports teams, government agencies, and television shows! And to up your social media game, let us show you what an all-in-one media monitoring, influencer outreach, social listening, and social management solution can do for your brand.

If you’re looking for some incredible marketing inspiration, look no further than the teams behind some of the top SaaS social media accounts online today. 

They excel at everything from storytelling to content creation to engagement and even throwing shade when the time is right. What makes the SaaS industry so great is that it’s relatively young and unbelievably competitive, meaning that there is no shortage of ground-breaking social experiments for us to learn from.

5 Amazing Examples of SaaS Social Media Accounts 

Quirky, fun, and incredibly entertaining, MailChimp might as well be teaching a master class in social media marketing.

It seems like every time I turn around their social media team is launching a new campaign—capturing the hearts of their audience in the process.

For example, MailChimp is used by thousands of small businesses around the world and so their team wanted to give back to those businesses during the holidays. That’s when the Small Business Saturday campaign was born. 

Most brands would stop with a few Tweets, but MailChimp took it a step forward by creating personalized, custom GIFs of their employees, which they used during the campaign to respond on social media. 

InVision’s social media strategy revolves around design—providing consistently useful and educational content across their various channels. In doing so, they hold their own against design competitors such as Adobe and Sketch. 

Their content is shareable, easy to digest, and uniquely catered to the people who matter the most: customers.

If you focus on posting great content every single day, the engagements (likes, comments, shares, and clicks) will naturally follow.

I like to think that great content is at the intersection of educational and entertaining.

In other words: edu-tainment. Aim to create content that’s both entertaining and educational, and you’ll be on your way to social success.

One brand that isn’t afraid to march to the beat of their own drum is Wistia. 

Everything from their social media account cover photos to their captions and content is shared in a way that shows off their one-of-a-kind brand personality. Not only does this set them apart from other SaaS brands on social media, but it gives their audience a reason to come back and engage on a regular basis. 

Take the Wistia “One, Ten, One Hundred” marketing campaign, for example. This idea originated from Wistia’s constant questioning of “marketing norms” and their quest to do things differently.

One big challenge for brands today is carving out a niche in a never-ending stream of online content. 

That being said, Wistia proves that you can still build a strong brand following on social media by humanizing your content and cultivating a brand personality that people can relate to.

The thing that makes Intercom so inspirational is their attention to the visual aspects of their social media accounts.

Everything from their cover photo to individual Tweets are designed to reinforce their overall brand. They don’t miss even the smallest of details. 

Take, for example, their use of the Twitter account cover photo in what is a creative visualization of how their product works:

Using visually appealing graphics such as this might seem like “too much” to invest in as a SaaS brand on social media, but Intercom has proven that it’s well worth the investment, surpassing 100,000 monthly users as of February 2017.

In a world where stock photos are the norm, breaking out with your own unique visual style might just be the boost your brand needs.

The more brands can get their audience actively involved on social media, the better their results will be. 

When it comes to activating an audience, Trello is one of the best in the business.

Recently, Trello launched a brand new campaign called #WhereITrello that asks their community to share photos and stories of where and when they use the Trello product.

Since the launch of #WhereITrello, the hashtag has been used more than 1,000 times across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram making it an instant and smashing success. 

The industry might be young and highly competitive, but there’s no shortage of SaaS social media accounts showing us all how it’s done.

To up your social media game, let us show you what an all-in-one media monitoring, media outreach, social listening, and social management solution can do for your brand. Fill out the form below and we'll be in touch.

5 Examples of Outstanding SaaS Social Media Accounts

Cultivate Social Communities | The First C

In our social media blog series digging into The 4 C’s of Social Media Marketing, we’ve discussed social listening as the foundation of a strong social strategy.  Once that strategy is set, campaigns come to life, your brand will benefit by engaging target social communities in conversation, rather than broadcasting a message at them.  Content that goes unshared is lonely, long-format advertising.  Remember, the number one goal of any social media marketing manager is to inspire word-of-mouth buzz and to help grow your online communities on the side. 

With that framework in place, we can now dive into the first C: social communities (also known as social networks).

Social Communities are the New Target Audience

Those of us who grew up steeped in traditional PR and advertising principles (read: those of us who remember life before the 90’s) weren't plagued by constantly chasing engagement figures. We started at the basics and learned that any successful campaign has three components: a target audience, a message, and a channel.

Once we move from the one-way message of monologuing to the two-way conversation of social dialogue, our target audience becomes a target community and we provide them with more value.  Like advertisers, marketers can qualify communities with standard demographic and psychographic filters (e.g. name, age, gender, interests).  However, the nature of social media is that communities can also be evaluated by their member relationships, behaviors and profiles and extended network.  With this insight, marketers can determine what content they create that engages community members, and who the influencers are within that platform.

An audience, by definition, is a group of people who witness something.  A community, by contrast, is an interconnected group of people who participate in something together.  This is where we clearly see the difference: a monologue marketing campaign aims to influence individual audience members directly, whereas a dialogue marketing campaign aims to influence community members collectively by sparking conversation. We encourage you to explore the latter. 

Find the Influencers in Social Communities

Both audiences and communities are made up of people.  Evaluating communities as a sum of individuals allows us to examine participation and influence beyond the single target community into the other social communities where an individual may be a part.  The ability to spot and engage the most influential members on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram (for example) is one of the big advantages marketers have over advertisers, and it’s why social analytics should focus on actions (shares) rather than intentions (impressions) - to benefit everyone involved.

Finding your influencers is much easier to accomplished with the right tools.  Community management has gone from the eBay model of activating an existing pool of people, who chose to engage on your message boards or with your service, to actively prospecting influencers within both your industry and within your frame of influence, whether or not those people have already engaged with your brand.  Having sophisticated community management tools gives the social media marketer an efficient, scalable way to build strong social communities around specific campaigns, topics and other criterion and to contribute to relevant conversations.

For more on building strong social communities, download The Four C’s of Social Media Marketing

Social – members interact with one another

Collective – members share a common interest

Credible – members share a foundation of trust with one another

Collaborative – members want valuable content to share, and will respond in kind

Spark Conversations in Social Communities with Content

In our recent SXSW wrap-up post measuring social media brand effectiveness, we noted the success of the Grumpy Cat campaign sponsored by social media publisher Mashable.  The cat’s appearance and consequent domination of social chatter was a great example of marketers knowing their audience – and in this case, that audience was a vibrant community.

The Internet loves its feline memes, and a picture really is worth 1,000 words.  Mashable set up a tent where people could come to take a photo with Grumpy Cat at a conference drawing 25,000 attendees, self-selected as both tech-savvy and tweet-ready.  By leveraging Grumpy Cat’s online popularity in person (in the fur?), Mashable gave the technorati a valuable piece of personal content to share on social channels and hijacked the social buzz, making Grumpy Cat was the most talked-about attendee of the entire show.

Mashable crafted its social marketing campaign with a target community firmly in mind.  Everyone who attended SXSW is a potential Mashable reader, and a large percentage of attendees are motivated to demonstrate their position on the bleeding edge of digital by sharing hot interactive trends.  In planning a campaign that would delight, engage and inspire this  community to share, Mashable demonstrated that cultivating strong social communities can really be as easy as flying a cat to Texas – and hey, cats fly free when accompanied by a human.

Social Communities | The First C of Social Media Marketing

For the past five years, Instagram has been an important tool for marketing and PR pros, allowing brands to produce everyday imagery to connect with audiences. But, as with every platform, the rules change and evolve which can affect your efforts to boost organic engagement. In this article, we look at how to get out from under a shadowban. 

More companies are noticing a drop in Instagram engagement, and more viewers who unfollow, despite the fact that the platform’s growth is accelerating. As soon as brands started noticing the drop-off and eventually compared notes with each other, theories emerged as to why certain posts were seemingly being suppressed, and the phenomenon was labeled a shadowban. In fact, the Instagram shadowban started being mentioned on social media in November 2016. By June 2017 it became a much-speculated-about, trending topic. Here we look at some of the best practices you can use to keep building engagement on the platform.

Mentions of the Instagram shadowban didn't significantly appear on social media until mid-November 2016, but after late March 2017 they gained steam and in many ways, are still relevant today.

It’s important to note that Instagram has never acknowledged an official policy for “banning” posts or hashtags. However, brands and influencers reported that their engagement on the platform had decreased noticeably. And, we know that Instagram does take initiative in terms of identifying and mitigating bot influx, so new precautions will continuously affect our ability to gain organic reach. We can see this in the anecdotal evidence from Amanda Rose from ldn rose “I noticed that I was getting close to no new followers a day. Previously I would get around 5-8 new followers a day (albeit I would also lose at least 3 a day ha!). The lack of new followers wasn’t too concerning. But, the drop in likes and comments was frustrating.” 

In previous posts, we’ve covered hashtag use as a way of hooking audiences that might not be following you. But with the shadowban, it seems like the use of these has led to posts being suppressed. Hashtags are essentially a search feature, and by associating your brand with a related one (preferably one that’s trending), you’re increasing the chances of your content being found. For instance, someone might type the associated tag into Instagram’s search field. Or they might simply click on the one in a post they’ve come across. But what if the hashtag you’ve associated yourself with leads to the opposite, and your post fails to show up in search results or public streams?

As Maggie Marton from BlogPaws put it, “….shadowban waters are pretty muddy. We reached out to Facebook (they own IG) for additional information. One thing we learned is that “shadowban” isn’t an official term at Facebook. It appears to be the pop culture term—along with ghost ban, stealth ban, or shadow ban.”

The shadowban has been associated with the use (or misuse) of hashtags, discovered when users started conducting some experiments. As Moonlit Creatures explains, “I’ve gone through ALL my hashtags and discovered that the #boho hashtag is broken. Using even one broken hashtag will render ALL your other tags useless! I don’t know if just this one thing will fix all my Insta problems, but I’m staying optimistic.” In other words, a post with an “offensive” hashtag will not show up in searches for any of the other hashtags listed in the post.

As a result of being shadowbanned, only your current followers will see your hashtagged posts as they show up in their stream (and if your followers were to re-gram your images, these images would be subject to the same shadowban). Not only does this limit your engagement with the greater IG community, but it can also lead to a stagnant or even negative growth rate. Obviously, the exact opposite of what we want.

Understanding the shadowban has become an even bigger priority since Instagram now allows stories to be hashtagged to receive additional platform exposure, based on these hashtags. It has been speculated that Instagram’s hashtag scrutiny is motivated by their attempt to use hashtags for ad planning, and to stop users from getting attention when they use irrelevant hashtags or overload posts with hashtags, thereby making the hashtag taxonomy less effective.

While brands still think of the shadowban as a problem, Instagram has avoided addressing related issues as bugs that need fixing. Instead, the platform has tried to provide guidance on the level of content: “We understand users have experienced issues with our hashtag search that caused posts to not be surfaced. We are continuously working on improvements to our system with the resources available. When developing content, we recommend focusing on your business objective or goal rather than hashtags.”

If You’re Caught in the Net of an Instagram Shadowban, What Should You Do?

Go here to check the posts you think may be affected. Be warned that this is an educated guess as to how the algorithm is identifying posts to shadowban. Another way to check is to log out of your account, search for the hashtags you’ve used in a specific post, and see if that post comes up in the search results. If your images aren’t showing up, posts with this hashtag might be flagged.

Then, Grab Strategies for Success from Top Instagram Influencers

Make sure you aren’t using any of IG’s banned hashtags that have been overtaken with spammy posts.

Form an Instagram Pod or Engagement group: A pod is an informal group of like-minded accounts that visit each other’s photos and feed the algorithm by engaging via original comments and likes. Learn more about influencer pods.

Even if Instagram allows 60 hashtags per post, should you really use that many? Use hashtags sparingly in conjunction with your branded hashtag(s). The Instagram limit per post is 60, but you may want to be more targeted and not come off as spammy with your hashtags.

Don’t use third-party apps to post photos, especially with hashtags. Revoke account access to any third-party apps you’ve enabled. Instagram isn’t a fan of third-party apps that like, post comments, or post hashtags on your behalf.

Be authentic when you comment on Instagram photos (and do it manually). If you reply on behalf of your brand in a generic or formulaic way, you may be flagged as a bot or deemed to generate irrelevant content.

Change from posting as a business account to posting as a personal account, be advised you’ll lose business capabilities, like insights and a Contact button. Know that Instagram may give you leeway to fly under the radar if you are not seen as being on the platform to generate revenue. Along these lines, unlink your Facebook fan page from your Instagram account.

It’s possible that Instagram will assess the impact on their channel as a whole and decide for themselves whether they will lighten the restriction or worse, increase them. If all this lowered engagement, excuses about resources, and lack of acknowledgment of a ban seems a little too convenient, there is always the option of taking out an ad. As Alexander from the Preview App remarks, “Instagram rolled out its Business Profile features. It wants you to pay THEM to get more engagement.”

To further protect your engagement and monitor the health of your keywords, see a demo of how you can keep track of what matters to you on Instagram, and stay ahead of shadowbanning. Simply fill out the below form and we'll be in touch!

7 Ways to Beat an Instagram Shadowban

We’ve previously covered how Instagram is quickly becoming the darling social media channel for the PR set. That’s why keeping up with the best way to create content for an engaged and savvy audience on this channel is more important than ever. Although this post is a roundup of Instagram for PR updates in 2018, we thought it would be useful to highlight some of the new content types from the past few years with tips on how to use these features. Read on to keep your Instagram strategy current.

In May 2018, Instagram announced they were once again changing the algorithm. This time they are prioritizing newer posts. They’re using the following criteria to determine the post order on a given user’s feed.

Timeliness: Newer posts are given priority on a feed.

Interest: Instagram predicts how much a user is likely to care about a post based on past behavior. For example, if a user regularly engages with makeup tutorials, these kinds of posts will be bumped up.

Relationship: Like Facebook, Instagram wants to prioritize content from our close friends and family. Beyond Facebook connections, those who users interact a lot with through comments and image tags will be shown first.

Instagram for PR: What does this mean for PR Pros?

Choosing the best time to post and especially the best time to post on Instagram is more important than before. Older posts may not show up at the top of a user’s feed. Therefore, knowing when your audience is active on the platform is essential.

Additionally, the relationship aspect of the Instagram algorithm means that we should work hard to build bridges with our social media community to encourage engagement. If our audience isn’t interacting with our content, it won’t be prioritized on their feeds.

2018 also saw Instagram launch an in-app shopping feature for business accounts. As we're sure you've now seen, brands can now direct shoppers to their e-commerce storefronts without compromising on the time users spend on the app itself.

According to Instagram, when someone taps a tag on your post, they’ll see:

A link that takes them directly to your website, where they can purchase the product

One caveat, your account needs to be approved for shopping to use this feature.

Instagram for PR: What does this mean for PR pros?

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Social Media Management

How Social Media Affects Politics

5 of the Best University Social Feeds

5 Examples of Outstanding SaaS Social Media Accounts

Social Communities | The First C of Social Media Marketing

7 Ways to Beat an Instagram Shadowban

Instagram for PR: Make the Most of the Platform Updates

Top CEO Social Feeds: How to Keep Your Brand on Top

3 Easy Steps to Using Facebook Interest Lists for Business

Are LinkedIn Groups Experiencing A Crisis?

Pro Marketing: 7 Tips for Managing a Corporate Twitter Account

When Brands Chat on Social Media

Edgy Brands: How to Be Sassy, but Keep It Classy, on Social

Interested in learning how Meltwater can help you? Fill out the form to learn more.